Note from CAPI

Over the past year, CAPI has led a multi-phase initiative to help shape a more coherent and effective agri-food innovation system in Canada. This work has combined system analysis, national stakeholder engagement, dialogue-based testing of emerging ideas, and structured convening across the innovation continuum. The objective has been to build consensus on the main challenges and opportunities facing Canada’s agri-food innovation system, co-develop a practical framework for action, and ground policy direction in evidence, operational realities, and the experience of those working across the sector.

That process has reinforced a consistent message: Canada’s main challenge is not generating innovation, but ensuring it moves through the system and delivers measurable impacts. It has also shown the value of creating space for funders, researchers, industry, and producers to test assumptions, challenge language, and refine priorities together. Stronger policy direction is more likely to hold when it reflects how the system actually works and where it breaks down in practice.

This report reflects one part of that broader CAPI-led initiative. It draws on the February 2026 AgRISE workshop, which focused particularly on commercialization, adoption, and scaling. Its purpose is to capture where the discussion became clearer, where perspectives are converging, and how the Innovation Statement and supporting recommendations were refined through dialogue.

Key Takeaways       

1. Agri-food innovation needs to work across the full pathway from research to scale. The direction that emerged more clearly from the workshop is a system that translates research and validated technologies into commercialization, adoption, and scale across the value chain.
2. Stronger direction and accountability are needed to reduce fragmentation. The system has no shortage of activity, but lacks clear priorities, aligned action, and a practical mechanism to address barriers that cut across governments and sectors.
3. Regulatory uncertainty continues to slow commercialization and adoption. Clearer pathways, more predictable timelines, and better coordination would improve the conditions for firms, investors, and adopters to move innovation forward.
4. The missing middle remains a major weakness in the system. Commercialization, modernization, adoption, and later-stage growth continue to be under-supported relative to where the system needs to perform.
5. More investment will have limited effect without changes in system design. Funding matters, but outcomes will continue to fall short if governance, regulation, program pathways, and enabling conditions do not improve alongside it.

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